


(don't) blame it on the moonlight

by liadan14



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: 5 Times, Aftermath of the First Crusade, An Attempt at Historical Accuracy Was Made, Aphrodisiacs, Canon-Compliant Historical Setting, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fully Consensual Sex, Improper Use of Linseed Oil, Intercrural Sex, Joe's family, M/M, Mentions of canon-typical violence, Mutual Pining, Nicky's family, Oral Sex, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Quite possibly less period-typical homophobia than was actually period-typical, Sex Under False Pretenses, Sharing a Bed, Something Made Them Do It, THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED, Vague Historical Plausibility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:40:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29820219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liadan14/pseuds/liadan14
Summary: “And it didn’t bother you that the guard thought you were -- that we were -- ?” Nicolò asks, for what is definitely the fourth time, as they bed down, hopefully hidden from view by the reeds and trees of the Nile delta.Yusuf sighs, rolling onto his back. “Do I mind that he thought I would be foolish enough to abandon all reason and take up with one of the men who helped sack Al-Quds? Yes, a little. Not enough to stop from using it as a perfectly serviceable escape route.”“No,” Nicolò says, “I mean, that you would prefer the company of other men at all.”Yusuf blinks, bemused. He hadn’t even thought of that. “As a rule, I try not to be insulted by accusations that are true,” he says drily.OR: Five times they were faking it and two times it was real.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 133
Kudos: 705
Collections: Start Reading





	(don't) blame it on the moonlight

###### One: Damietta, 1099

“I can’t believe I’m about to do this,” Yusuf mutters to himself. He steels himself, raises his fist to knock at the door to the jail, then reconsiders.

What’s the worst that could happen? He could leave Nicolò behind, be rid of the man for good. It would certainly save him the trouble of explaining to the idiot why walking into the mosque Yusuf had been visiting without bothering to wash the dust from his face or take off his shoes had gotten him into trouble. 

_And then what will you do, Yusuf,_ the annoying voice in the back of his head asked him. _Return home to your mother and tell her you can’t die and the only man who might be able to help you understand is rotting in a jail cell for the crime of being uneducated on Muslim practices that you could have explained to him?_

Really, he should have just stopped this all instantly, when Nicolò had told the angry Imam he was there to see Yusuf. The Imam had asked Yusuf, “Is this true? Is this man your friend?”

He wasn’t, not truly. The best Yusuf could say for him was that he was no longer Yusuf’s enemy, and so Yusuf had hesitated, and so Nicolò had been taken away by the soldier who had just finished his prayers, and now here Yusuf was. He didn’t blame the Imam, of course. Word travelled fast these days, by boat and on horseback, and news of the Christian’s holy war had certainly reached Damietta. They were right to be cautious of invaders, protective of their customs and their homes.

If only they hadn’t been cautious of Nicolò.

Yusuf sighs and knocks at the door.

“It’s you,” the soldier from the mosque says, surprised and displeased. 

“Yes,” Yusuf says. “It’s me.”

“Well,” the soldier says. “You had better come in.”

Stomach sinking, Yusuf does. What can Nicolò have possibly done to get himself into even more trouble? He’s already in jail.

“He says you brought him here from Al-Quds,” the soldier says.

 _Fuck,_ Yusuf thinks. “That’s true,” he says.

“You seem a devout man. Why would you travel willingly with someone like him?” The soldier asks. “Don’t you know what they _did_ in Antioch?”

For a moment, Yusuf’s throat closes up. He knows. He knows the dead lined the siege camps before the city gates and the streets within, horrid, emaciated corpses. He knows, because Nicolò has told him. 

He knows what they did in Jerusalem. He saw the blood run thick on the cobblestones. 

He knows who -- what -- Nicolò is.

He also knows Nicolò laid down his sword first.

He also knows he woke up alone and confused from death, and the only answer Allah has provided for his increasingly intermittent and desperate prayers for help is the idiot in the jail cell.

“I know what they did,” Yusuf says. “I have no excuse for him. I only know I need him.”

The soldier shifts his spear from one hand to the other. “Ah,” he says. 

Yusuf isn’t entirely sure how his answer was helpful - it certainly hasn’t helped him so far - but he is led to Nicolò’s cell all the same. 

“You ought to leave fast,” the soldier cautions. “Everyone is worried about the war in Al-Quds coming our way. And they do not take kindly to -- your sort, at the best of times.”

“My sort,” Yusuf repeats. He can just spot Nicolò, sitting on the floor of his cell, too-thin frame hunched over, hands clasped in prayer.

“It’s brave of you,” the soldier says, clapping him on the shoulder. “To follow your heart. Stupid, but brave.”

There is no sensible response Yusuf can make to that. “Thank you,” he says weakly. “You are doing us a great service.”

“Go on,” the soldier tells him. “Go to him.”

Yusuf will - Yusuf has to - he has no other choices - but he needs to know, first. “You don’t think it wrong?” He asks. 

The jail is illuminated by torchlight, and it draws long shadows on the man’s face, leaving him gaunt and haunted. “I don’t know what I think,” he says. “But I know my sister is married to a good man whose touch makes her sick, and I can’t do anything about that.”

Yusuf goes to Nicolò.

“Come on, ingrate,” he says, in Greek and in an undertone. “We have to leave town.”

“Yusuf,” Nicolò says, sounding shocked, scrambling to stand and meet Yusuf at the cell door. “I didn’t think--”

“When do you ever?” Yusuf cuts him off. “Act like you’re glad to see me.”

Nicolò’s barely shorter than him, but he manages to stare up at Yusuf as if there were starlight in Yusuf’s eyes. Who knew the man was such a good actor? Yusuf had taken him for a blunt instrument, but perhaps there was more to him yet.

The soldier comes up behind Yusuf to open the cell door. “You don’t have much time,” he cautions. “I’ll have to sound the alarm. But you can take a moment. I’ll turn my back.”

He does, demonstratively, and Nicolò looks to Yusuf in confusion. 

Yusuf does not know whether the guard speaks Greek, nor does he know whether he could convey the full severity of the situation fast enough.

“Follow my lead,” he mutters, hoping it is opaque enough, hoping the tone is gentle enough, to fool the soldier, and then he leans down to kiss Nicolò.

Under his hands, Nicolò’s ribs are too pronounced. His body is tense with shock and his lips are dry.

“Ya amar,” Yusuf murmurs against his lips. It is the only endearment he can bear to bestow upon Nicolò, the cold, unfeeling moon, far away and inscrutable. “We must leave.”

“Good luck,” the soldier says in parting.

It is a hard night’s travel to get far enough away from the city, cold and tiring and lacking in a horse or adequate supplies, and by the time they make camp, dawn is already fingering at the edges of the sky.

“And it didn’t bother you that the guard thought you were -- that we were -- ?” Nicolò asks, for what is definitely the fourth time, as they bed down, hopefully hidden from view by the reeds and trees of the Nile delta.

Yusuf sighs, rolling onto his back. “Do I mind that he thought I would be foolish enough to abandon all reason and take up with one of the men who helped sack Al-Quds? Yes, a little. Not enough to stop from using it as a perfectly serviceable escape route.”

“No,” Nicolò says, “I mean, that you would prefer the company of other men at all.”

Yusuf blinks, bemused. He hadn’t even thought of that. “As a rule, I try not to be insulted by accusations that are true,” he says drily. 

Nicolò says nothing for such a long time that Yusuf has to prop himself up to make sure he’s not about to be knifed in his sleep again. “If killing me for being Muslim didn’t work, killing me for that probably won’t either,” he warns.

“I wouldn’t,” Nicolò says, so vehemently that Yusuf cringes at his volume. “I would never, never again, Yusuf. Not for anything and least of all for that.”

“Least of all for that,” Yusuf repeats, tasting the words in his mouth carefully. They have a history of misunderstanding one another, but the sentence sounds like something Yusuf has heard in his own heart more than once.

The silence drags, and so does the need for sleep weighing on Yusuf’s limbs.

“I’m sorry you had to kiss me,” Nicolò says at last. “I will do better.”

“How do you enter a mosque next time?” Yusuf quizzes through a yawn.

“Not at all if I can help it,” Nicolò repeats dutifully. “And if I must, I wash myself and take off my shoes.”

“Good.” Yusuf’s stomach rumbles and he groans. “I wish we’d had time to get food.”

There is a soft thunk next to Yusuf’s head. A little pouch rests there, the pouch Nicolò had tied to his belt. Yusuf opens it to find it filled with fresh dates, somewhat worse for wear after their travels.

“That’s why I was in the mosque in the first place,” Nicolò admits. “I found them at the market, and I remembered you liked them.”

Yusuf has to close his eyes for a long moment.

What an _idiot_.

He eats three dates and then bids Nicolò goodnight.

As he’s falling asleep, he remembers that the guard’s back was turned and there was absolutely no reason for him to actually follow through with kissing Nicolò.

###### Two: Valencia, 1106

“Ah, Yusuf,” Fatih says sadly. “I like you, and I suppose your friend is alright, but I cannot in good conscience have two men as such close personal guards to my daughter.”

“I thought you wanted her to have bodyguards!” Yusuf protests. “It’s a long journey from Valencia to Marrakesh.” In truth, he doesn’t feel all that sanguine himself about Layla making the trip without dedicated bodyguards. In Spain alone, the situation has been unstable and constantly under threat. Yusuf ibn Tashfin is as good a leader as Yusuf has known, but with what he has experienced in the East, he doesn’t trust the hold of the Al-Murabitun on North Africa quite as much as his employer does. 

Layla is a sweet girl, and it is a hard enough trip, alone, without her father.

But Fatih shakes his head again. “No, no,” he says. “You’ve been a great help with my accounts, and I won’t deny that your friend here,” he gestures vaguely toward Nicolò, who was summoned away from his work in the stables for this little talk, “has proved very helpful. But my daughter, travelling in the company of two men....” He shakes his head. “The usual guard for the caravan will have to do.”

Fatih has lost two wagons full of goods in the last year alone to thieves and raiders. 

He’s still Yusuf’s employer, so Yusuf doesn’t say as much, but he thinks it, very loudly.

Fatih sighs. “I’ll give the guards a very stern talking to.” 

Fatih’s talking-tos are about as stern as Yusuf is mortal.

“If it is of any help,” Nicolò begins quietly, and Yusuf tries not to wince. Nicolò’s Arabic has improved over the last five years of knowing Yusuf, it’s true, but his accent is still unmistakeable and he holds himself with a humility that sits at odds with the warrior Yusuf first met. “I have no interest in women, nor does Yusuf.”

Yusuf nearly swallows his tongue.

“Well,” Hamid says with portentous intonation. “Well.”

Yusuf rubs his hand over the back of his neck and tries to sink into the floor.

“Why didn’t you say so sooner?” Hamid asks thunderously. “And here I’ve had you sleeping in separate quarters! Yusuf, what an oversight! I am overjoyed to have such trustworthy protectors for Layla.”

In some ways, Yusuf is glad. They’ve been in Iberia for five years already and by rights, he should be nearly forty by now, but though his own father was more grey-haired than black at his age, Yusuf has yet to grow a single grey hair. Iberia is practical, in that he and Nicolò do not stand out together as much as they did nearer Al-Quds, but Yusuf is starting to fear that any place will become impractical after too long. 

Besides, he’s an active man and he’s been chafing against his position with Fatih for months. Doing the accounts is fine, Yusuf has a head for arithmetic, but he feels a pang of _something_ indefinable every time he looks out the window to see Nicolò with the horses, leading them across the courtyard, rubbing them down, laughing into their manes. 

He misses the outdoors, is all.

And Nicolò must miss having more challenging activities, though he never admits to it. He’s an educated man, not a hostler, for all he’s talented with the animals.

However, lying next to Nicolò on the very narrow bed of Yusuf’s quarters, it’s hard not to find some things to regret. 

“I’m sorry,” Nicolò says.

“You apologize too much,” Yusuf complains, shifting uncomfortably on his too-small side of the bed.

“You keep saying that,” Nicolò complains back. There’s a smile in his voice.

Yusuf throws his hands up dramatically. “You apologize for the horse smell, you apologize for the size of your shoulders, you apologize for your place of birth, you apologize for your own ingenuity…”

“It did seem like the best way to help Layla,” Nicolò admits. “Especially since I didn’t technically lie.”

Yusuf thinks back. _I have no interest in women_ , he’d said. _Nor does Yusuf_. Not a lie. 

“And I am sorry,” Nicolò reminds him. “For my ignorance and my violence.”

“So you’ve said,” Yusuf says. They have discussed it many times in the last five years. Nicolò has spent more time studying the Quran than he has in that time. He’s even gone into mosques, without his shoes, and spoken with Imams at length. Once, memorably, Yusuf had lost track of him on a market day, and found him losing horribly at chess against a rabbi. 

(Yusuf might not admit it, but he has taken a few glances at Nicolò’s bible.)

“Someday,” Yusuf says into the quiet and the dark, “We will have to move on from regretting the past toward figuring out the future.”

“So,” Nicolò agrees, his breath warm against Yusuf’s cheek. “Marrakesh.” 

“I am never going to sleep like this,” Yusuf warns. “Let alone for the entire trip.”

“One of us will have to keep watch on the road,” Nicolò points out.

Yusuf groans. Sleepless nights. “But we’ll be expected to share quarters.” He points out. “And meals. Fatih wants everyone to treat us as a couple.” Yusuf would think it a kindness, on Fatih’s part, a chance to be themselves openly, if it were not so transparently a ploy to protect Layla, both in body and in reputation. They will not be making any new friends on this trip, that much is certain. And Yusuf will not be getting any sleep at all if he has to attempt to stay on one half of the narrow pallet.

“What do you suggest?” Nicolò asks.

Rolling onto his side, facing Nicolò, Yusuf shifts until he can get comfortable, one arm thrown over Nicolò, the other under his own head. It’s warmer like that, too, closer to Nicolò’s heat, and Yusuf begins to drift off against his will. “Alright?” He remembers to ask muzzily.

He thinks Nicolò answers, “Perfectly,” but he’s asleep too soon to be sure.

The plan goes well until Fez, at which point Layla, who is a sweet girl but a little too curious for her own good, asks to see them kiss. She is headed toward her own wedding, with a business partner of her father’s, and she is anxious about what she will find there. Her mother is waiting in Marrakesh, but on the journey, the only women to answer her questions are her own age and all of them are servants.

Yusuf and Nicolò are the only men who she can trust not to take her questions the wrong way, and her closest guards.

“We can’t say no,” Yusuf groans in Greek. 

“I suppose not,” Nicolò says. It’s dinner time, and they are seated on cushions around the low table in Layla’s quarters. It’s better service, and better food, than the rest of the group are receiving, and they are well aware of the honor. As are the rest of the group. There have been barbed comments dogging their steps and it is lucky they bed down outside Layla’s tent, because no one else wants them near. It will be untenable to stay long in Marrakesh; in subtlety, a relationship like the one Yusuf and Nicolò are feigning might be acceptable, but this ruse has protected Layla’s reputation and destroyed theirs.

“I’ve never seen anyone kiss,” Layla says around her last bite of flatbread, ignoring their conversation. She does that frequently, and has ever since she realized they only spoke Greek with one another so she wouldn’t listen in. “What if I do it wrong? What if I disappoint everyone?”

“You could never,” Yusuf assures her instantly.

“Not if you help me,” Layla agrees.

Yusuf sighs.

Nicolò wipes his face with his napkin. He signals to the maid to clear their plates, thanks her kindly and even correctly in Arabic. He holds out his hands to Yusuf and helps him stand.

With both of their hands clasped together, Nicolò pulls Yusuf in tightly. Yusuf stumbles in surprise, but Nicolò catches him. His shoulders are astonishingly broad, when he stands up straight. Nicolò’s smile is a little crooked, Yusuf thinks, in the split second before Nicolò leans in and slides their lips together. 

There’s a hint of moisture clinging to their lips from dinner. Their hands are still clasped together.

When they pull apart, Layla asks, “That’s it?”

“What do you mean, _that’s it_?” Yusuf asks, insulted. “That was a lovely kiss.”

He sneaks a look at Nicolò, who nods, although he is flushed red.

“Surely that’s not all,” Layla protests.

“Well, there are different kinds of kisses,” Yusuf hedges. “For different kinds of occasions.”

“And what occasion was that?” She asks. 

Yusuf shrugs helplessly. “Every day?”

“How does that help me know how to kiss my husband on our wedding day?”

It doesn’t, she’s right about that, and with a wordless noise of frustration, Yusuf turns back to Nicolò and slides their lips together. He angles his head and grasps Nicolò around the waist. He remembers, suddenly, the jail cell in Damietta. He could have counted each of Nicolò’s ribs with his fingers then. He’s thrilled, unaccountably, that he can’t anymore.

Under Yusuf’s lips, Nicolò’s open up. Their tongues slide together wetly and Yusuf chases the little gasp Nicolò makes. One of Nicolò’s hands settles on the back of his neck. It’s rough, from his work with the horses, and Yusuf shudders.

He pulls back to breathe.

Nicolò stares at him, eyes wide, panting.

Yusuf clears his throat. “Does that help, Layla?” He asks.

“I think so,” she says.

Because they’re in Fez, there are guards all around the house and neither of them needs to stay up and keep watch. This means they are settled close together on the pallet once again, sharing the same sheet and the same air.

“I’m sorry if that was too much,” Yusuf says. “I didn’t mean to cross a boundary.”

“This ruse was my idea,” Nicolò reminds him.

“That doesn’t mean I have leave to do what I like with your body.”

“One kiss is hardly the worst leave I’ve had taken with my body,” Nicolò laughs.

“Oh _really_ ,” Yusuf crows, eyebrows shooting to the top of his forehead.

“Stories for another time,” Nicolò demurs.

Yusuf props himself up on an elbow. “No, no,” he says. “I burn with curiosity.”

“Fumblings between boys in the stables,” Nicolò demurs again.

“No wonder you like the horses so much. Ow!” Yusuf rubs at the shoulder Nicolò punched.

The sheet shifts, and Nicolò props himself up on an elbow as well. “After Marrakesh,” he says, “after the wedding…”

“Yes?”

“We aren’t that far from your home, are we?”

Yusuf sighs and throws himself onto his back. “We will be, in Marrakesh.”

“I doubt we’ll want to stay there.”

Yesterday, Hamid, the first guard for their caravan, called Nicolò a very unsavoury name. Nicolò’s shoulders had tightened, but he hadn’t said anything. He knew the word because Yusuf had called him that, and worse, in the first months of their acquaintance. It didn’t stop Yusuf from punching Hamid in the ribs. There is, after all, a cold comfort in knowing that the worst these men can do to them is kill them. In reaction, Hamid had unleashed a slew of even less savoury terms about their fictional relationship and it was only Layla’s summons for dinner that had interrupted what would have been a brawl.

It’s true, Yusuf has considered going home many times. The first time they passed through the region, it was all too new and confusing, he had Nicolò in tow and he didn’t like him half so well as he does now. This time...well, there’s nothing stopping them.

“You can leave me in Marrakesh, or perhaps rather in Fez,” Nicolò offers. “You’ll know where I am.”

“Why would I do that?”

“I’m from Genoa,” Nicolò says. “You’re from Mahdia.”

That is a problem.

A greater problem, in Yusuf’s mind, is the noise Nicolò made three days ago, when the caravan was attacked on the road and he was stabbed between the ribs. That little choke as the air leaked from his lungs has lived in Yusuf’s thoughts ever since, and he doesn’t like the thought of it happening again in his absence, whether Nicolò rises again or not.

“I’d rather not be separated so far,” Yusuf says. “You never know what might happen. And we don’t know for sure the dreams will return if we’re apart.”

“Hm.”

“My family will understand,” Yusuf says, with more conviction than he feels. “We could always say you’re from Pisa.”

Nicolò sniffs with disapproval. “I suppose,” he says.

Yusuf laughs. “Now come here.” He holds his arms open. “You know I can’t sleep without you.”

###### Three: 1107, Mahdia

“Alright,” Yusuf says, sniffing the air as his stomach gurgles. “I admit it. You were right.”

“Magnanimous,” Nico says drily. 

“Occasionally, even Genoans have good ideas,” Yusuf says loftily.

Nico rolls his eyes. “Don’t even joke,” he says. He’s probably right. Yusuf’s family has been thrilled to have him back, but they’ve been far more hesitant about Nico’s presence. It’s understandable - the only real connection most of his siblings have to Genoa is the ships burning in the harbor when they were barely old enough to run.

Yusuf had been twenty and furious.

Nico had been seventeen and visiting a cousin in Venice.

It can be hard to remember.

In the end, Yusuf hadn’t been able to bring himself to lie about who Nico was, when his Mama had asked why he had brought someone who was supposed to have been his enemy home with him. He was already lying far too much - why had he taken so long to come home? Well, Mama, I had to flee Al-Quds in the dead of night and I had no money for the journey home. Why had he not written sooner to tell her he was alright? Ah, Mama, I was lost in the desert for months, and when I finally knew where I was again, I was so far south there were no messages to be sent, no boats and no messengers available. 

If she knew he was gallivanting across the Iberian peninsula, teaching Nico Arabic and watching him tend to horses, it would break her heart.

They had thought him dead and mourned his loss, and Yusuf still isn’t entirely sure whether that might have been the better option. For a given value of the term _dead_ , it was true that he was; certainly truer than what he’s told them instead. 

So when she’d asked, “Yusuf, please help me to understand why you would bring this man into my home,” he’d said the only thing he could.

“We are bound by an immortal fate,” he’d said, as close as he could come to telling the whole truth.

She’d accepted it, no further questions, which struck him as odd, but not odd enough to complain, not when he’s here, in his childhood home, the scent of his Mama’s lamb stew rising thick in the air.

“You are a very good friend,” Yusuf tells Nico as they walk toward the kitchen.

Nico laughs. “What brought that on?”

Yusuf shrugs. “I have dragged you across most of northern Africa at this point, and not once have you complained about being thrust into situation after situation where you are the odd one out.”

“I have no right,” Nico says quietly. 

Yusuf is very hungry - _very_ hungry - but he turns back to Nico in shock. “I thought we’d talked about this,” he says. “You have every right. Your happiness is my concern--”

“I’m happy,” Nico says gently, smiling his little smile that had infuriated Yusuf for a full year until he understood that Nico only smiled more broadly in the most extreme paroxysms of joy.

“Good,” Yusuf sighs in relief, clasping his cheek.

“If you two lovebirds are going to be like that I’m going to hog all the stew,” Yusuf’s sister Maryam warns loudly from the kitchen.

Yusuf pulls away instantly.

“Lovebirds?” He asks, voice gone high and tight, but she never answers, lost in the bustle of his nieces and nephews and sister-in-law and brother making for the dinner table.

It doesn’t ruin his dinner ( _nothing_ could ruin his Mama’s lamb stew), but it’s a close thing. He’s tense and anxious, keeping his elbows carefully to himself, not touching Nico. The conscious effort involved alerts him to the fact that he’s gotten used to touching Nico as a matter of course. He supposes, after the months they’d spent, playacting as a couple on the slow trek toward Marrakesh, it became natural, how he reaches for Nicolò. 

He wonders if he can blame Fatih for how he refills Nicolò’s plate automatically because he never takes seconds even when he wants them, or if he can blame Layla for the fact that the natural position for his arm is resting on the back of Nico’s chair. Most likely, he thinks. Fatih’s insistence they be as open as possible to protect his daughter’s reputation was confusing, that’s all.

He takes his time cleaning up the dishes, after, to think.

“It’s alright, you know,” his Mama tells him. She’s so much older than he remembers. He has been gone nearly eight years, and she is sixty now. Her hair is going white, and her back gives her trouble. She sits down more often than she ever did, in Yusuf’s memory.

“Hm?” Yusuf asks distractedly, scrubbing at the pot. 

She leans back in her seat. “That you love him,” she says. “It’s alright.”

He opens his mouth to protest, to tell her she’s gotten it all wrong, but she holds a hand up.

“I never wanted you to leave, you know,” she says. 

Yusuf knows. 

He has restless legs - itchy feet, Nico calls it - born from following his Baba all around the Mediterranean as a boy, seeing each port and helping with each trade. He’d already chafed against being left behind when Baba had gone to Antioch - they had heard about the war from trading partners in Greece, on Malta, on Cyprus, and Baba hadn’t wanted to risk his children. Yusuf had argued he was younger and better in a fight, but to no avail. 

When they’d gotten word that Baba couldn’t leave Antioch, trapped in the siege, Yusuf had been packed and ready to get to his side instantly. Mama had argued - what good would he be if they lost him to the same war? Yusuf had argued that Baba was not lost yet, and they’d parted on sour words. More than anything, he regrets that she’s spent the intervening years thinking she was right.

He had reached the war too late to save his father, but not too late to help Al-Quds, or so he’d thought. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, raw and quiet. “That I couldn’t bring him back.”

She closes her eyes. “I never expected you to,” she says. “I hoped, but it was a foolish hope. I am glad that my other hope, for your return, was less so.”

Yusuf dries his hands on his trousers and wraps his arms around her middle from behind her chair, resting his chin on her head. “I’m sorry I left you waiting so long.”

She pats his hands. “You’re here now. And I can’t imagine how hard it’s been, you and him.”

She can’t, it’s true. She’ll never know how it felt to bleed out under Nico’s broadsword, furious and scared, only to gasp back to life, soiled in his own blood and shit, and do it all over again. She can’t imagine long nights in the cold desert, hardly daring to sleep in case their uneasy truce broke overnight. She probably suspects Nicolò’s earnest, clumsy attempts at amends, because he does the same for her, finding the best cuts of meat and the freshest fruit at the market and bringing them back to her kitchen when no one can see to thank him. Still, she can’t know what a seismic shift has occurred under Yusuf’s feet, that those acts fill him with tenderness instead of rage, now that he knows who Nicolò is and who he tries to be.

“But I know you love him,” she tells him. “And I’d rather you let yourself do it than hide from us all.”

Yusuf presses a kiss into her hair. 

What else should he do? Say he doesn’t love Nico? It would be a lie. It might not be what she thinks it is, but his fate is tied to Nico’s, cursed or blessed as they are. More than that, in seven years, Yusuf has become glad it is Nico his fate is tied to. He doesn’t want to imagine a future, roaming the earth, undying, alone, nor does he want to picture it with anyone else.

He finds Nico crouched on the ground outside, helping Ibrahim’s children organize their rows of toy soldiers into proper battle formations.

Ibrahim offers his hashish pipe, and Yusuf accepts.

“Zara still won’t let you indoors with it?” he asks as he hands it back.

Ibrahim shakes his head ruefully. “She says it’s a nasty habit.”

“She’s probably right.”

They smoke in silence until Maryam and Zara call them all back in because no one plays the oud quite like Ibrahim does and the children beg and beg until Maryam sings a little. Nicolò scrambles to follow, brushing the dust and dirt off his clothes fastidiously and stopping by the well to wash his face and hands. 

Yusuf swallows against the wave of fondness he feels for the man and beckons him to sit.

“Are you alright?” He asks Yusuf, low and in Greek, settling close to him. “You were quiet, at dinner.”

“Mm,” Yusuf agrees. Ibrahim’s Greek is very good, especially now that he’s taken over Baba’s business. “Apparently, everyone knows.”

“Knows?”

“That we’re in love,” Yusuf tells him, his beard rasping against the thin skin of Nico’s neck. 

Nico shivers a little with what Yusuf can only assume is suppressed laughter. “Ah,” he says. “Well then.”

“It seems you’ll be sleeping by my side again after all,” Yusuf tells him, almost ruefully, and then leans in so close he can whisper his apology right into Nico’s ear, so no one else can hear it.

Zara looks askance at the openness of the gesture, but then, Zara has always had very rigid ideas on what is proper.

Nico shakes his head, but doesn’t answer. 

Yusuf keeps an arm around his waist all evening. It’s comfortable, and the hashish left him pleasantly relaxed. In a way, it’s nice. He’d never told them, before, that he held no interest in women, and he hasn’t had to tell him that his bond with Nico is important enough to transcend reason. It feels like acceptance, to sit here like this, belly full, head hazy, Nico by his side and his family all around him. 

“I’m sorry you had to tell them you’re in love with me,” Nico says, later, when they’re on their way to bed. 

Yusuf’s brow furrows. “Why?” He asks.

“I knew it would be better if you came home alone,” Nico sighs. “Now you have to lie just so that I’m allowed to stay.”

“No,” Yusuf frowns. “Maybe it’s why you were allowed through the door. You stay because they see how important you are to me.”

“ _Yusuf_ ,” Nico breathes, and he looks as if he’s about to say something, smile spreading wide on his face, but Yusuf can hear Maryam’s tread on the stairs, and she’s a bloodhound for secrets, and maybe he’s more addled than he thought, because he pushes Nicolò into the wall by the door to his -- their -- room and kisses him, open-mouthed and filthy.

He hasn’t kissed anyone besides Nico in years -- and what a sad thought that is -- but he has kissed Nico enough by now to expect his little startled exhale, to have found the place at Nico’s waist where his hand fits just right, to expect the weight of Nico’s hands on him in return. It just hasn’t been quite like this, before, pressed close and tight in the dark of the night like lovers. Nico’s cheeks are rough with stubble and his lips are soft and when the hand at the back of Yusuf’s neck tugs at the ends of his hair, he makes a sound against Nico’s lips.

“Lovebirds,” Maryam sing-songs as she passes by them on the way to bed.

Too long after she has passed them by, Yusuf pulls away from Nico. 

His heart pounds and pounds and pounds.

In the morning, he wakes up not beside Nico with one arm thrown over him as usual -- at least, as usual when they share a bed -- but entwined with him, one leg slotted between his, nose buried in the nape of his neck.

“I’m sorry,” Yusuf says, red-faced at the sight of Nico’s sleep-hazy eyes, his warm body. It’s turning to summer and he’s been sleeping without a shirt and now here he is, Nico in his arms, his own body thrumming with arousal. “I shouldn’t have shared Ibrahim’s pipe, it’s not good for me.”

Nico laughs lightly, barely even a twitch of his lips. “Don’t worry about it,” he says. “After all, it’s not the first time.”

Two weeks later, Yusuf’s middle nephew hits him in the shin with a sword while they’re practicing and watches in awe as the wound closes up before his eyes. 

Nico looks at him with his eyes made for sorrow and tells him what they both already knew: That he can’t stay forever. That it’s better to leave now, when the memories are good.

Yusuf watches the coastline disappear from the deck of the ship and mourns his family who are not dead yet but will think him so again in a few years time, when he doesn’t write and doesn’t return. He mourns the lies he told them, both about the past and the future.

He mourns the loss of a reason to sleep with Nico’s warm body in his arms, too, and knows in his heart of hearts that if he were a better son, a better brother, he would mourn that least instead of most.

###### Four: Genoa, 1107

“Are you really sure this is necessary?” Yusuf asks dubiously. 

Nico’s grown his beard and his hair out in the last few weeks. He looks almost like he did outside the gates of Al-Quds, although he is neither as crazed nor as sunburned. 

“Yes,” he says shortly, and proceeds with rolling his tunic in the dirt.

“We really don’t have to go see your family,” Yusuf protests weakly, watching the stretch of Nico’s bare arms and shoulders. 

Nico glances back at him over his shoulder. “I think I will regret it, if I don’t,” he says. “If I don’t at least know.”

Yusuf accepts the answer and lets Nicolò continue to ruin his one clean tunic. For his part, it’s all still too fresh for him to know if he will regret having seen his family one last time or not. Would it have been better to have let his last memory of his mother be of words said in anger, or of lies he told her? Only time will tell.

Time which, apparently, he has a lot of. He studies his reflection in the creek by which Nico is engaging in this dubious project. Still no grey in his hair. Sometimes, he traces across the one lone particularly blue and pronounced vein on his thigh. His father’s legs had looked like a road map by the time he was fifty. Yusuf had spotted his one and only such vein on the way to Al-Quds. In the nine years since, no others have joined it.

“Alright,” Nico says.

Yusuf stands and brushes the dirt off his own clothes. He’s comfortable looking like a traveller, not like a vagrant, unlike Nico, who is covered in mud and unrecognizable.

“That’s the point,” Nico says when Yusuf points this out. 

They walk through the city nearer dusk than Yusuf would prefer, but he’s deferring to Nico’s judgement, here. They were travelling through places he felt at home and Nico didn’t for years, he reminds himself. Nico knows more about this place than he ever will.

He’s a little surprised when they pass by the merchant’s quarters with no comment or sign of stopping from Nicolò. He knew Nico was more than a tradesman’s son, or his Greek wouldn’t be so proficient, but the further they go, the grander the houses become, until they’ve passed through every point of interest.

Nico must note his confusion, because he says, “It’s a little outside of town,” sounding almost apologetic. 

They walk for three hours, and by the end of it, Yusuf feels almost as dishevelled as Nico looks. The house they’ve stopped in front of is about twice the size of the one Yusuf grew up in, and he stares by turns at Nico and at the house.

“I wasn’t aware I was travelling with nobility,” Yusuf says, out of breath and peeved, somehow. He’d thought he knew everything there was to know about this man. Only now is it occuring to him that they have never truly discussed Nicolò’s family. 

“Would it have made a difference?” Nico asks. His jaw is tight, and it has been since they came within spitting distance of the city.

Yusuf considers. “No,” he says.

Nico rolls his eyes, but at least he smiles, a little. 

They enter through the kitchen at the back of the house. There’s a moment when they’re spotted by an older woman in nightclothes and she nearly screams, but Nicolò speaks with her, too rushed for Yusuf to keep up. He’s learned some Zeneize, but it was always more urgent for Nico to speak Arabic, something Yusuf is regretting intensely at this point. He has a few rudiments in Latin and he used to be quite conversant in Venetian, back when he practised regularly, but it’s not helping at this precise moment in time. 

Whatever it is that Nico says, it gets them time alone with a water basin and a razor, which Yusuf appreciates desperately. 

“No,” Nico says, shocked, when Yusuf grabs the razor from him once he’s clean-shaven again. 

“If you get to shave that rat’s nest off your face, so do I,” Yusuf tells him calmly and sets to work. He hasn’t shaved his beard off entirely in years, but they’ve been travelling on foot for weeks at this point and he feels too grimy to bear it. 

“Oh, but I love your beard,” Nico says.

Yusuf finishes his stroke with the blade. “Well now I feel bad for calling yours a rat’s nest,” he says, smiling over at Nico. He will grant a bit of stubble suits Nico very well indeed, but the long beard he’d been sporting to hide his identity on the trek through the city was truly not becoming.

“No matter,” Nico waves him off. His freshly shaved cheeks are pink, probably from the cold water and the shave. It is a far more becoming sight than Yusuf has been accustomed to.

“I don’t suppose there is more water for drinking?” He asks idly as he finishes shaving. 

“Ah,” Nico says, halting in midst of rubbing his face and hair dry with a cloth. Water drips onto his shoulders - bare, once again, now that his ruined tunic has been taken away and a fresh one provided. “Oh, that will be an issue.”

“Water is an issue?” Yusuf asks skeptically, cupping some of it in his hands and pouring it over the top of his head. 

There is a long pause in which Nico does not answer his question.

When Yusuf’s cheeks are satisfactorily clean and the sweat has been cleaned from his upper body, he looks back over at last to find Nico rubbing at his face with the cloth intensely once again.

“Water?” He prompts.

“Ah,” Nico says. “Yes. Apologies. The water here isn’t always safe to drink. Generally, people drink wine. Or beer. I’ll tell the cook about the barley water Fatih used to serve, that ought to do.”

“Hm,” Yusuf hums, dissatisfied. “What about tea?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” Nicolò admits, and pulls his fresh tunic on.

Cleaned and shaven, Nico leads him down a very long corridor before halting in front of a particularly shiny wooden door. “Unless more has changed than I can imagine, they’ll be here.”

He takes a breath, and then pushes the door open.

The room is lit softly by candles, windows thrown wide open to let in the evening breeze. Two women are sitting on opposite sides of the room, one with needlework, one with a book. 

The book falls to the floor when Nico steps into the room.

The older of the two women is on her feet instantly, stepping towards him. “Nicolò,” she says.

For a moment, Yusuf thinks she will fall into his his arms, like his own mother did. It’s clear Nico thinks the same, he steps closer, his arms raise a fraction - but he stops short just in front of her, and she stops short just in front of him, and neither of them touch.

“We thought you were dead,” Nico’s mother says. Blessedly, though she is speaking Zeneize, it is slower, more measured, somewhat understandable to Yusuf.

“I’m sorry,” Nico says.

He apologizes too much.

For a given value of the word, he was dead, several times. By Yusuf’s hand, a baker’s dozen.

The other woman sets down her needlework and rises to stand as well. “Umberto?” She asks.

Nico shakes his head. “He’s buried outside Antioch,” he says.

“You’re sure?” The younger woman looks a little like Nico, Yusuf notes. Her hair is a shade or two lighter, but her eyes are much the same shade, and her nose is as marked as his. He wears it better; it makes him look far less regal.

“I buried him myself.”

Yusuf has to force himself to not look at Nicolò as he says it.

“Where is father?” Nico asks.

Both women look away. “He’s ill,” Nico’s mother says. “He has been for some time.”

“Ah.”

“Guido is sending for a doctor tomorrow,” the younger woman says.

Yusuf’s restraint is only so strong, and he looks over to see Nico’s eyes shut on an inhale and open again as he exhales steadily, betraying no hint of emotion. 

“Guido?” Nico asks.

“Spinola,” the younger woman replies. “My husband.”

“I was wondering how the house came to be in such good repair.”

“Guido has been very generous with us,” Nico’s mother says. “I am sure he will be pleased to see you returned to us.”

Nico’s sister says nothing.

“Who is your friend?” Nico’s mother asks at length, at which point introductions are made.

Ludicrously, Nico introduces him as “Giuseppe di Valencia”, but his family appears to take it in stride, and at least Yusuf is able to put names to the faces: Lucia, Nico’s mother, worn around the edges but regal in bearing, and Benvenuta, his sister.

To his great irritation, he also discovers Nico is right: they are offered drinks, but none are free of alcohol, and he is forced to turn them down and avoid Nico’s sad, sorry gaze. At length, Nico manages a hushed word with a servant, and Yusuf is offered a glass of milk. He tries not to drink it all at once and give himself a stomach ache; he has been sad to learn that while wounds are easy to heal and illnesses are easily weathered, his body will still punish stupidity.

They are given adjoining bedchambers, something Nico appears to be consternated about, which -- Yusuf is, in general, perhaps somewhat overly sensitive, but it does rankle. For months on end, Nico was happy to share his bed, to the point where he was spat upon by other men for it; for Yusuf’s family, even, it was alright to pretend, but here, in his mansion, where his own family lives, sharing a door is too much of an imposition.

He is perhaps a little too aggressive when he asks -- demands, really, “Why did you never tell me you had a brother?”

Nico shrugs. “Would it have made a difference?”

“That’s the second time you’ve asked that today,” Yusuf says. There’s an itch under his skin and it feels like he won’t be able to get it out unless Nico answers him properly.

“It’s an important question,” Nico contends. “Would it have changed your opinion of me, at the beginning, to know my family lives in a pile of rocks this size? Would it have mattered that I, too, lost family in Antioch? Or would it have all been excuses, more excuses to justify why I was there, in Al-Quds, burning and pillaging with the worst of them?”

It would have been the latter, Yusuf knows. When he met Nico, when they had first set out together, Yusuf had said in no uncertain terms he could never forgive the man who chose to align himself with the army that murdered his father for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Would it have made him feel any more lenient to know that Nico’s brother died gruesomely outside the very walls his father died behind? It seems doubtful, in retrospect. He would have said it was Umberto’s own fault, travelling to foreign lands, attacking cities not his own - better the attacker die than the innocent bystander.

“I suppose,” he says.

“It should have been me,” Nico says with a quiet certainty that Yusuf hates. “I should have starved, I should have died - he told me so, you know, in the end. I was the younger son.”

Yusuf reaches out for him, then, clasps his arm. 

“I never meant to keep things from you,” Nico says. “I just...did not see a purpose in justifying my hatred and my actions. They were unjustifiable. If anything, this house, this heritage, should have made me wiser.”

It certainly sounds like Nico is far wiser than his brother was, but Yusuf holds his tongue on that account. 

“I may not have been then,” he says instead, “but I am sorry now, for what you’ve suffered.”

“Because you are too good for me,” Nico tells him, matter-of-fact, looking down at their clasped arms.

“I think I am just right,” Yusuf says, and pulls Nico in for the embrace his family denied him.

The next day, Nico is brought to his father’s sickbed. With nothing to do, Yusuf wanders the house and the grounds. It’s not so big as all that, now he sees it in the light of day. The gardens are overgrown, and the library is in a sad state of disrepair, books dusty and damaged by the light from the too-large windows. 

Because he isn’t idle by nature, he inquires after a cloth for dusting and a few tools for shelf repairs in the kitchen. He understands more of the fast-paced Zeneize being spoken among the servants than he can replicate, but even so, it is a chore to make himself understood in turn.

Still, late afternoon finds him ensconced in a freshly cleaned armchair with a very fragile copy of Augustine of Hippo’s confessions - a very illuminating text on a number of Nico’s stranger habits, thus far.

“I had an inkling I’d find you here,” Nico says, pushing open the door to the library. “I’m sorry for leaving you alone all day.”

Yusuf looks between the book, the armchair, and the half-eaten plate of fresh, juicy grapes he’d managed to talk the cook into giving him. “Truly,” he says. “I have suffered greatly.”

Nico gives him that gossamer little half-smile.

“You look exhausted,” Yusuf says. “Sit down. Have a grape.”

Nico has five before Yusuf dares ask, “How is your father?”

“Dying, I expect,” Nico says. “He didn’t recognize me.”

“I’m sorry.”

Nico sighs and eats another grape. “You apologize too much.”

“I must have learned that from you.”

“My father didn’t like me overly much when he did recognize me, and the older I got, the more it became mutual,” Nico tells him eventually. “Does that lower me further, in your estimation?”

Yusuf lays the book aside carefully and goes to rest a hand on Nico’s shoulder. “You must know how highly I esteem you, my friend,” he says.

“I had some hope,” Nico admits easily.

Rubbing his hand up and down Nico’s back, Yusuf says, “I’m sorry you didn’t get along with your father, and I’m sorry he doesn’t recognize you now.”

Nico doesn’t answer, but he leans back into Yusuf’s touch.

The doctor Benvenuta’s husband sent for takes up residence that night, and over dinner, talk is entirely focussed on the illness and what can be done. As far as Yusuf can tell, at any rate; Guido speaks far faster and far more colloquially than Nico’s mother, and Nico and Benvenuta seem to have no problem keeping up.

Lucia is quiet, and she drinks rather a lot of wine.

They sit in the same parlor as the previous evening, and Yusuf reads more of Augustine while discussion continues around him. Nico, he notes, grows quieter and quieter the more Guido speaks.

Past midnight, Nico knocks on the shared door between their bedrooms.

Yusuf is already without his shirt when he opens the door.

“First,” Nico says in Arabic, “these rooms can be watched. There’s a passage to the staircase in the back - anyhow, we’re not alone, so I will be fast. Try to look at me like you care for me.”

Yusuf blinks, startled.

“Yes, like that,” Nico says. “With me gone, and Umberto dead, the house goes to Benvenuta’s son.”

Yusuf had seen little Guido toddle across the grounds today. The boy is no more than four.

“And?” He asks.

“With me back, they worry I will take it from them. I have the right.”

“And will you?” Yusuf tries to picture it, Nico here, in this house, walking the grounds, speaking kindly to the servants, reading in the sitting room. It is a nice thought, but it sends a pang through him. He has no part in that life.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nico says, levelling him with a glare. “I’m not likely to father any sons, and I’m also not likely to die. Sooner or later, both will be noticeable.”

A wave of relief so strong it almost swamps him momentarily derails Yusuf’s complaint that if he’s supposed to look at Nico like he cares for him, Nico ought to return the courtesy.

“So who is watching us?” He asks instead.

“My sister and her husband,” Nico says, lips barely moving. He’s choosing not to name them, so they can’t overhear words they know, Yusuf realizes.

“That worried about a four-year-old’s inheritance?”

Nico sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “It’s not just his,” he says. “His father wants the land; his mother wants the power until he comes of age.”

Yusuf reaches up gently to pull his hand away from his hair and stroke it flat again. Nico keeps forgetting his hair is longer, now. “And you worry about that in turn?”

“They think we’re here to usurp them,” Nico says. “He wasn’t quite circumspect enough about that, just now, when he was drunk. He knows you’re no Christian and he doesn’t trust our motives.”

“So…?” Yusuf prods.

“So I need them thinking our motives are quite different ones,” Nico says, a breath against Yusuf’s lips.

Kissing him this time is dangerously familiar. 

He’d taken advantage, he realizes starkly, in Mahdia. Those two weeks, an open secret, an excuse - he’d taken it gladly in both hands, he’d pressed kisses to the top of Nicky’s head, to the apples of his cheeks, grazing across his lips in passing. 

His body has grown too known to Yusuf’s, his kiss has grown into a comfort, and Yusuf is helpless to do anything but fall into it. 

It’s the association with his parents’ house, maybe, or the familiarity of Nico’s touch in a place he’s never been and feels unwelcome, that makes Nico’s thumb tracing the line of his shaved jaw feel like coming home.

“Tell me if it’s too much,” Nico breathes into his mouth when he pulls away for an instant.

Yusuf becomes aware that his bare back is against the wall, that he is cold and shivering everywhere that Nico is not. Nico’s open mouth trails down the line of his jaw and his head tilts back on instinct.

“I thought you missed my beard,” he says, trying to sound like this is a turn of events he was expecting.

“I do,” Nico says, cupping the side of Yusuf’s face he isn’t kissing in his hand, thumb tracing the line in Yusuf’s cheek. “I didn’t know you had dimples, though.”

He bites at the top of Yusuf’s neck.

Yusuf’s hands belong at Nico’s hips, and they tighten down, push him around until it’s Nico caged into the wall by Yusuf, until he can kiss Nico like he wants to, deep and drugging. “How far does this go?” He whispers into Nico’s ear, then nips at the lobe with his teeth.

Nico squirms in his hold. “As far as you’re willing,” he says.

 _As far as he is willing_ , Yusuf repeats in his mind even as he slides his thigh between Nico’s legs, which part for him eagerly.

The difficulty is, if that is the boundary, there will be no end to this. 

Yusuf slides his hands up, grips the material of Nico’s tunic with both fists, and pulls until it rips off of him. 

Nico stares at him, wide-eyed and flushed, breathing hard.

The remains of the tunic fall to the floor. Their fingers lace together on instinct as Yusuf pulls Nico toward the bed.

“You’ll tell me to stop,” he whispers as he pulls Nico down on top of him. “You’ll tell me when it’s time.”

Nico doesn’t tell him to stop when their hips align on accident and despite Yusuf’s best efforts, a moan escapes from between his teeth.

He doesn’t say it when Yusuf scrambles with the tie to his trousers; instead, he rids Yusuf of his own.

When Yusuf wrestles him over onto his back just to see if he’ll make that little gasping noise Yusuf remembers from kissing him in Mahdia when his nipples are sucked on, he doesn’t say _stop_. He says, “More, Yusuf, please,” first in Arabic, and then in Zeneize. Yusuf has known since Damietta that Nico’s acting is far superior to his own, but he looks so honestly overwhelmed and lost in pleasure that anyone watching would surely be fooled, would think he had switched languages in pleasure and not in cunning. 

Yusuf’s role in all this is clear: He must act as if he wants to be trailing kisses down Nico’s torso, as if he wants to be teasing him with licks and stroking his smooth skin.

It is not the most challenging role he has ever played. 

He hesitates, mouth above Nico’s erect cock, for a long moment.

Nico does not tell him to stop.

Nico’s hips buck up, his cock drools precome onto his abdomen, and he says, “ _Please_ ,” sounding so earnestly desperate that Yusuf’s hips hitch down into the bedspread of their own accord. 

There are thoughts Yusuf does not allow himself to have.This is a door he has kept shut in his mind, and so it leaves him unprepared, what happens when he put his mouth on Nico’s cock: the way Nico’s lithe body shakes under his, the way his hands clasp at the bedspread, the startled noises he makes up to the ceiling.

He’s beyond aroused, he realizes, he’s throbbing with need, and that’s new, he hasn’t felt that in so very long. His body had been distant to him, for a long time after his first death, and after, there had always been other things more important - the new contours of his life, keeping his and Nico’s secrets, and for a not insubstantial portion of the last two years, pretending to be Nico’s lover.

Perhaps he was a better actor than he thought, because his body can act on what his mind hadn’t known.

Perhaps he was a worse actor, after all, because Nico’s hand grasps at his shoulder, at his hair, and Yusuf moans around his cock.

Nico is gasping out snatches of Zeneize, some that Yusuf knows and many that he doesn’t. He hears verbs - _want, need, love_ \- and he hears _you_ and he hears _Yusuf_.

He wants to draw off, to answer Nico’s calls, to tell him something, but Nico hasn’t told him to stop, and Yusuf also wants him to come in his mouth.

He sucks harder, uses his tongue around the head, sloppy and uneven, uses his fist to catch his own spit and stroke Nico off around the base, where he’s just too big to fit in Yusuf’s mouth.

Nico breaks in fits and starts, in gasped-out endearments, in the clench of his fingers in Yusuf’s hair. He keeps his hips on the bed, but his toes curl and clench beside Yusuf.

When he done, when he pushes Yusuf back, hissing weakly in oversensitivity, it becomes apparent that Yusuf’s body has become one long nerve, that Nico’s touch on his shoulders makes him shudder all over.

“Come here,” Nico demands, voice rough, like he was the one with a cock down his throat, and _oh_ , that is a thought, that is -- that is -- a thought Yusuf cannot finish thinking, because before he can, Nico has dragged him up the bed, has wrapped his hand around Yusuf’s cock, and he aches and cries out and writhes in Nico’s arms. 

“I’ve got you, ya rouhi,” Nico bites into his skin, and Yusuf comes and comes and comes, twisting in his grip.

It is a long time before either of them catches their breath.

“I suppose it is a good thing we know how to sleep like this already,” Nico says eventually, somewhat rueful.

Yusuf is loath to admit that he sleeps better, now, with Nico in his arms than he does without.

“Do you really think they’d hurt us over this house?” Yusuf mumbles into the back of Nico’s neck, once they’ve gotten arranged. “She’s your sister.”

“It’s not just the house, it’s the title,” Nico says. “And yes.”

Yusuf does not know what to say. “It won’t work, we can’t die,” is the wrong thing, he realizes, as soon as he says it. 

Nico tenses in his arms, and Yusuf wants to apologize, but before he can, Nico sighs. “What was it you said?” He asks. “I try not to be upset by accusations that are true? I would rather my sister know of a venial sin I have committed and will continue to commit than commit a mortal one herself.”

Yusuf has thoughts, both about accusations and about how upsetting he finds it to order and rank one’s sins so very thoroughly, but they’ve talked about both before and he is so very tired and Nico is so warm in his arms. He falls asleep before he can answer, and when he wakes up again, the bed is empty.

It makes sense, he supposes, that Nico would return to his own bed around dawn, to pretend he doesn’t want to be caught.

What a stupid situation.

His jaw is a little sore, he notes, and he rubs at it as he uses the washcloth and the bowl of water on the table by the mirror to wash his face. His hair is a mess. 

There’s a shiver down his spine at the memory of Nico’s hands in his hair.

Ruthlessly, Yusuf tamps it down, and when he can’t do the same to his hair, he ties it back with a bit of cloth he rips off of Nico’s destroyed tunic, still lying on his floor.

Breakfast is stilted and awkward, and there is a mark just under Nico’s ear, where Yusuf had set his teeth and Yusuf can’t look at it. After, Benvenuta goes to visit the tenants, pointedly not inviting Nico.

“When things are more settled, you’ll go with her,” Nico’s mother says to Nico, after she’s left, and Yusuf may not be terribly fluent in the language yet, but he can tell she knows better. 

Nico spends the day with his brother-in-law, sorting through his father’s papers.

Yusuf spends it out on the lawn, sketching the view of Genoa in charcoal.

“You have some talent,” Lucia observes when she steps out of doors in the afternoon, straw hat firmly on her hair. She’s speaking the Venetian dialect, which must be her native tongue, because she is quicker in it, and more fluent.

Yusuf shrugs at his painting. It will do.

“I wish I could offer you paint,” she says. “But none of my children are artists.”

He wonders for an instant if she was, at some point.

“No matter,” he says. “They have other qualities.”

“Will you tell me what Nicolò’s are?” She asks.

Yusuf lays aside his charcoal. 

“I haven’t seen him in so long,” she says. She’s twisting a basket with a pair of scissors inside in one hand, and Yusuf grasps that she must be nervous. “And he seems so foreign to me. You seem to know him well.”

“I do,” Yusuf acknowledges. Better than anyone, he does not say. “He’s very thoughtful,” he does say. “He thinks of others before himself, and when he can be, he is just. Intelligent, too.”

She nods sharply. “Good,” she says. “He was so eager with his sword as a boy, I am glad he has learned other qualities are important as well.”

“Was he eager?” Yusuf feels compelled to ask.

“Well,” She says. “His father was eager, and Nicolò was eager to please. It is a shame neither of them remember that.”

He has no response to that that wouldn’t overstep his bounds or his competency in the language, so he returns to his sketch. 

“Is it a good quality?” She asks. “In a leader? To put others first?”

Yusuf shrugs. “I haven’t met any to whom it applies.”

She nods sharply. “I thought as much,” she says, and then departs towards the garden.

The rest of the day passes much the same as the one before it.

It isn’t even midnight yet, when Yusuf throws open the door between his and Nico’s room.

“They could still be watching,” he says.

“They could,” Nico agrees, and then he sinks to his knees right there on the floor, pressing Yusuf back into the door with his shoulders boxing in Yusuf’s hips. 

Later, he thinks he dreamed it all, the hot suction of Nico’s mouth, the way he placed Yusuf’s hand at the back of his own neck, how he’d touched himself as he pleasured Yusuf as if nothing could give him greater pleasure. He thinks it must have been a dream, must have been, when he surfaces from sleep in the middle of the night, and he luxuriates in it. When he forces his eyes open at last, he is lying in Nico’s bed and Nico has Benvenuta’s dagger at his throat.

It is an unfortunate way to awaken, but it is still pleasing to know that Yusuf didn’t dream the heat and perfection of Nico’s mouth.

“Shh,” Nico says in Arabic, catching sight of his widened eyes, his open mouth. “She won’t hurt me.”

“Tell her to take the knife away,” Yusuf demands. 

“I have,” Nico says, far too peevishly for the earnestness of the situation.

“Stop speaking to him,” Benvenuta demands in Zeneize. “Bad enough you do _this_ with him. This is between family.”

Nico turns back to her. “It’s all yours,” he says. “I won’t protest it. Just let us leave, Benvenuta, and it will all be as it was.”

“How do I know you won’t come back?” She demands. “With an army of heathens? To steal my son’s inheritance.”

“Because I don’t want it,” Nico tells her. “All I want is him. I just wanted to see you one last time, that’s all. No one in town has seen me, I made sure of that, no one knows I’m here -- just let us leave.”

The conversation goes on, after that. Yusuf hears Nicolò called a sinner and a sodomite and a few other words he doesn't understand. But the knife is not so close to Nico’s throat anymore, and the words _all I want is him_ reverberate around Yusuf’s mind like his head is a hall of mirrors and the words are the grotesque rendition of exactly what he wants to hear, spoken as a lie.

They leave before dawn. The ink on Nicolò's father's signature, disinheriting him, is not dry yet, though the man himself has been dead for hours.

“I’m so sorry,” Yusuf says when they’re safely ensconced below deck of the only ship that would have them, headed for Malta.

For once, Nico lets him be sorry, or at least, he doesn’t protest.

“You knew, didn’t you?” Yusuf presses. “Before we even got there? That’s why the beard, and the dirty tunic, all of it?”

“I suspected,” Nico admits.

“So why go?”

Nico’s long legs sprawl out and his head thunks back against the port side of the boat. “Peace of mind,” he says. “I’ll never regret not having seen them, now. I’ll never worry that I abandoned them. I’ll know where I wasn’t needed and why.”

Yusuf thinks of Nico’s mother and how she’d almost taken him in her arms when she first saw him. “Just because you weren’t needed doesn’t mean you weren’t wanted,” he offers.

“Perhaps,” Nico says, still not looking straight at him. “But I try not to long for too many impossible things at once.”

“You are a strange man.” Yusuf shakes his head. “Here, I made you this.” He passes Nico the sketch of Genoa. “It won’t last very long, but perhaps it will remind you of home for a time.”

At last, Nico looks at him. “I’m sure it will remind me,” he says. “Thank you, Yusuf. I will treasure this.”

###### Five: L-Imdina, Malta, 1107

For a Byzantine city, L-Imdina is instantly sympathetic to Yusuf. Perhaps it is that the city hasn’t been Byzantine all that long; perhaps it is that the language is so close to home he picks it up easily; perhaps it is that this is the first time Nico has breathed easy since they left his family home two weeks ago. Either way, Yusuf is glad of it. 

The first inn they passed needs help repairing the barn and offered them reduced rates on a room for their help as well as a hot meal, and beyond that, Yusuf is sure they will find work. They always have. Perhaps it will even be time to seriously consider finding the women in their dreams, now. Now they both have nowhere to go back to. Now he knows they will not be separated by the past.

His first priority is that Nico rest.

He has been withdrawn, these last weeks, understandably. Yusuf would reach out to him, would comfort as he knows best, with touch, but after everything that happened in Genoa, he’s a little worried he’ll start touching and never stop, and it doesn’t seem the right time to put that on Nico as well.

Instead, he ushers Nico into the cozy taproom of the inn. 

“Careful, now,” the innkeeper’s wife laughs as she places their meals in front of them. “Tonight’s dinner is a well-known aphrodisiac, and you two men travelling all by yourselves.”

Nico flushes all the way to the roots of his hair, so Yusuf takes it upon himself to respond. “Ah madam,” he says. “Not to malign your cooking skills, but my friend and I have just had such a journey that I doubt the arrow of Eros himself could inspire us to anything but a friendly smile.”

She pats his shoulder and tells him, “More’s the pity, because I know quite a few nice girls in the area who’d love to meet a man like you,” and then, mercifully she leaves.

When she’s out of sight, Nico buries his head in his hands, shaking with laughter. “That was awful,” he gets out, muffled by his hands and his laughs.

Yusuf can’t help but laugh along, relieved that Nico is coming back to him. “She meant well,” he says. “And it’s true, you know. Oysters are a well-known aphrodisiac.”

They’ve never made Yusuf feel anything besides full, but he keeps that to himself.

“Come on,” he says. “Eat up, then rest, and tomorrow we’ll think about what comes next.”

Nico smiles at him (for him, Yusuf’s traitorous heart believes). “That sounds good.”

It is good, it is very good, up until the drawback of not paying full price lets itself be known: The bed in their room is abominably narrow, and there is only one.

“Well,” Yusuf says with put-upon cheer. “We’ve shared plenty of times before.”

They have, it’s true, but he’s never known how Nico sounds, how he smells, how he feels, naked and coming apart under Yusuf’s hands. It is very different, now, to wrap his arm around Nico’s waist, to snuff the candle, to feel that skin under his hand.

This used to be relaxing, he remembers. It used to be his favorite way to sleep, until he looked once directly into the sun and understood that it is _his favorite way to sleep_ , and now he will never sleep like this again, plagued by his memories, haunted by his wishes.

His is tight as a bowstring behind Nico in the bed, exhausted and restless, when Nico speaks.

“Yusuf?” He says.

“Yes?” Yusuf whispers.

“Is it really true?” Nico asks. “About the oysters? Because I think--”

Yusuf is on him before he can finish the sentence.

Nico's body is hot under his hands, his mouth is slick and open for Yusuf's.

"Yes," Yusuf gasps between kisses. "Yes, it's true, I need you, Nico."

Nico throws his head back on a groan. "I'm yours."

Yusuf bites into his collarbone, his neck. He wants Nico marked up, looking debauched, taken. "I've dreamt of your mouth," he admits to Nico's skin. 

They're half-naked anyway, the end of summer leaving the air humid and warm. It's easy work to slip out of their trousers, to kick the sheet down the bed, until it's all limbs, all heat, all Nico underneath him, hips bucking up against Yusuf.

"Yusuf," Nico groans, surging up against him. 

Yusuf pulls, he remembers how it felt to have Nico on top of him and he wants it again, always.

The bed is narrow; he lands only half on it, his hip precariously far over the edge. When Nico follows, his hungry hands tracing lines of fire across Yusuf's skin, they overbalance.

Yusuf hits the floor hip-first, and pain lances through him sharp and hard.

"Are you alright?" Nico asks, half off the bed himself.

"Already gone," Yusuf assures him, and it is, the bruise healing before it can arrive properly. Really, the effects of oysters should be gone from Nico’s body just as fast--

But he doesn't have the capacity to consider that now, he pulls Nico down on top of him, tangles their legs together until he can feel all of Nico pressed up against all of him. 

He reaches between them, wraps a hand around them both, and groans when Nico thrusts down into his grip.

"Yes," Nico moans above him. "Yes, like that."

"Ya amar," Yusuf sighs out. Nico's cock is leaking onto his and it is the most erotic experience of his life.

Nico bites into his shoulder and he arches up.

His fist clenches tighter around their cocks and Nico shudders above him, hair falling across his eyes.

"Faster," Nico moans, and Yusuf goes faster, stripping their cocks, damp with sweat. Nico leans in to kiss hin and suddenly, he's close, balanced on a knife's edge, ready to come all over Nico's cock, ready to sob in his arms.

"Yes, yes, yes," he gasps out between strokes, between kisses, his body clenching and seizing. The orgasm is work; his stomach clenches, his arm aches, his balls throb and clench and he moans in relief when he finally spends, hard, in the scant space between them. Above him, Nico is gasping out wordless noises. He flushes all down his neck and chest when he comes, wet and warm on Yusuf's skin. 

He's glorious.

Nico falls to the side beside him. They stink of sweat and come, they're both bright red and panting.

From his position on the floor, Yusuf can see the moon through the window, bright and big.

He remembers thinking, once, that her light was cold and heartless. It seems a disservice, now, when she’s helped him find his way across so many different lands, when she’s guided his steps, when she’s blessed him with friendly tides.

There's a hand on Yusuf's jaw, and then a mouth over his, kissing him soft and gentle. 

"Maybe the oysters aren't out of my system yet," Nicky says with an apologetic smile.

Two weeks ago, he held Yusuf as he shook apart and called him his soul.

Yusuf stares up at him.

"I'm an idiot," he realizes.

###### \+ One: L-Imdiya, 1107

Nico draws away from him.

Yusuf catches him by the hand that’s a little too slow to leave his face. He sits up with Nico’s hand trapped in his own, forcing Nico to do the same.

“I’m an idiot,” he repeats, slow, wondering, “and you are far more conniving than I thought.”

Nico flushes and pulls at the hand Yusuf’s still holding, but he’s not going to let Nico get away that easily.

“Oysters, Nico?” He asks. “Really?

When Nico won’t meet his eyes, he tilts Nico’s chin up and forces the issue. “I am willing to bet,” he says, “that any boy from Genoa has at least heard that myth about oysters.”

Nico doesn’t say anything, avoids his gaze.

“We try not to be upset by accusations that are true,” Yusuf reminds him. 

Nico sighs and looks at him at last. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I never meant to take advantage.”

Take advantage? Yusuf wonders. “I fail to see how you could, ya amar,” he says.

“Don’t,” Nico says. “Don’t call me that.”

 _Ya rouhi_ , Nicolò had called him that night, and the night after _all I want_. He’d said he would rather his sister know of a venial sin he had committed and would continue to commit.

Yusuf raises Nico’s hand to his lips and kisses the back of his hand, the knuckle of his thumb, his palm for good measure. “Not even if it’s true?”

Nico inhales, rough, shuddery. “If it’s true,” he says, “then that is another matter.”

“Tell me,” Yusuf demands, feeling he has the advantage with Nico’s hand in his. “How have you taken advantage, my love?”

There is a glow to Nico’s eyes, one he’s seen before but hasn’t put a name to yet. Perhaps it is adoration. “I lay in your arms night after night,” Nico confesses, tone low and even, practiced. “And I acted as if it were a duty.”

“Was it not?” Yusuf asks, sliding closer so he can kiss the soft skin of Nico’s wrist.

“If it was, it has brought me more pleasure than any duty ever has. I kissed your lips.” Nico’s voice hitches when Yusuf draws his mouth up the soft skin of his inner arm. “And I allowed myself to pretend that you returned my love, when we kissed.”

Yusuf frowns, nips at the crease of Nico’s elbow. “And it pained you, when we parted,” he guesses.

“A just punishment for the crime,” Nico allows. “Covetousness is a sin.”

“Is it,” Yusuf asks without asking (he knows, he’s read the texts). “Even when you covet what is already yours?”

“ _Yusuf_ ,” Nico breathes.

“What else?” Yusuf asks, retracing his steps up Nico’s arm with teeth and tongue.

“You know,” Nico says breathlessly. “You know what happened in Genoa, you know how I fall apart at the promise of your touch, that I never asked you to stop even though you didn’t know what I felt, that I was taking more than you were giving. You know I lied, just now, to have you in my arms again.”

“Don’t you think,” Yusuf asks meditatively, kissing the pad of each of Nico’s fingers, “if I hadn’t wanted you in my arms, if I hadn’t desperately desired your kiss, that I would have found other solutions? Less stupid solutions?”

A snorting laugh breaks free of Nico’s mouth and Yusuf loves it. Loves him.

“I would have claimed every food I tasted as an aphrodisiac if it meant I could touch you again,” Nico admits softly.

“I would have believed you,” Yusuf says instantly. He’s so close to Nico’s face now, he can kiss his cheek, his jaw. “Have you really loved me since Valencia?”

“At least,” Nico says easily. “And more with every day since.”

Yusuf has to kiss his lips, then, has to hold him close.

“Yusuf,” Nico says when they part, and Yusuf is convinced he’ll never tire of the way Nico says it, like he is taking off his boots at the end of a long day, relieved and relaxed. “Tell me?”

Yusuf rests his forehead on Nico’s shoulder. “I wish I could,” he says. “But I’m an idiot.”

Nico’s hand scratches through the hair at the base of Yusuf’s skull. “So you’ve said. I’d still like to know.”

“I had my first inkling in Mahdia,” Yusuf admits. “When I woke up holding you so tightly. But I think I had just been ignoring all the signs before then.”

“For a moment, that morning, I thought it was real,” Nico admits.

“It was always real,” Yusuf tells him, and kisses him as carefully and thoroughly as he is able.

The night air is starting to cool down the room, and before too long his skin is covered in goosebumps from the careful sweeps of Nico’s gentle hands and the breath of wind through the open window. 

“Come to bed with me,” Nicolò asks of him.

“Always,” Yusuf promises instantly.

“Yusuf,” Nico laughs, rising to poke through his pack for something or other as Yusuf gets into the bed, straightens the sheet they’d kicked into disarray in their haste before.

“I mean it,” Yusuf says, sliding under the sheet, admiring the view of Nico bent over his pack. “Every night. For the rest of our lives.”

“That could be a very long time,” Nico points out, straightening again.

“Do you doubt me?”

“You have just told me, several times, that you are an idiot.” Placing the bottle of linseed oil he used to use to keep his horse’s saddle supple, back when they last had horses, on the nightstand, Nico slides into bed.

Yusuf curls into his heat. “I have also told you that I love you,” he says.

Nico frowns, considering. “Have you, though?” He asks. 

“If I have not, it was an oversight on my part,” Yusuf grants. “I love you.” He kisses Nico chastely on the lips. “I love you.” He kisses Nico’s cheeks, first one and then the other. “I love you.” He tugs at Nico’s earlobe with his teeth, and the gasp he gets to hear as a result is even more gratifying than it was in Genoa.

Nico grasps him by the hair (and they will need to have words about that, later, when Yusuf is not entirely composed of love and joy and desire, he cannot spend eternity looking like Nico has just mauled him, as much as he’d like to) and tilts his head back to kiss him properly. “I love you,” he says against Yusuf’s lips. “I will love you. Always.”

There is very little talking, after that. 

The first flush of crazed passion burned out of them, before, but this is new, too: how reverent Nico’s hands are, how gentle his mouth. Yusuf sighs beneath him. To know, now, that Nico loves him -- he is a lucky man. 

For his part, he has known the shape of Nico’s waist and hips beneath his hands for too long already without being able to stroke over them softly, to hitch Nico’s leg over his hip, to caress his thighs as they kiss.

“Turn around,” is the only thing Nico manages to say between kisses.

He understands, almost instantly, why Nico loves it when he is held like this. He is warm and safe in Nico’s arms, a solid wall of heat at his back as Nico presses up against him.

Of course, it’s never been quite like this. He’s never slid his cock, slippery with linseed oil, into the space between Nico’s thighs, never gripped Nico’s cock in his fist from behind, and that has been a terrible mistake, because he wants Nico to feel exactly as good as he feels now. 

“You are very smart,” he groans, trying not to go insane at the slide of Nico’s slick grip on his cock. It would have chafed, without the oil, they were so rough with each other before, but this - this feels - Nico’s hips thrusting against his back, Nico’s cock fucking between his thighs, Nico’s hand on him --

“Ya rouhi,” Nico says against his neck, sending a fresh wave of shivers down Yusuf’s spine. “Tesoro, Yusuf.”

Yusuf’s thighs clench on instinct and Nico _moans_. 

“Nicolò,” he murmurs, then cries as Nico’s hand speeds up around him. “Nicolò, yes.”

“I’ve got you,” Nico says, rough and breathless, and he does, he has Yusuf, he holds Yusuf’s heart in his beautiful hands. Yusuf comes just like that, held fast in Nico’s arms, crying out his pleasure into the pillow, safe and loved. Nicolò’s thrusts turn rough for an instant after, and then he groans into Yusuf’s shoulder and pulses onto his thigh and Yusuf has never felt quite like this in all his life.

He nearly cries when Nico starts to pull away.

“Shh,” Nico says, “just to clean us up, I promise.” There’s water and a washcloth by the door, and Yusuf is thankful, he is, he knows it would be dry and tacky and disgusting come morning, but he’s also barely holding onto consciousness and there is no good reason for him to sleep without Nico.

“I’m here,” Nico says as he curls into Yusuf’s hold, soft, familiar.

Yusuf buries his nose into the back of Nico’s neck and inhales the familiar scent of Nico’s sweat. He wraps his arm around Nico’s middle, lets it settle right where it belongs. He slides his leg between Nico’s until there’s not a part of their bodies that isn’t touching.

They’re both asleep in seconds.

###### \+ Two: Athens, 2021

“Chocolate is an aphrodisiac, you know,” Joe says, licking chocolate mousse off his spoon.

Nile rolls her eyes. “You said that about the calamari already. And the wine.”

He spreads his arms wide, grinning innocently. “And it’s all true. Is it not, my heart?”

Nicky shakes his head in wordless disapproval. He’s smiling, though, Joe can see the crinkle of his eyes just beyond the corners of his sunglasses.

“Seriously,” Nile says. “You’ve been alive for about a zillion years. Have you ever heard of any so-called aphrodisiac actually working?”

“Excuse me,” Joe says, insulted. “I am a young and sprightly nine hundred and fifty-four. And I have found that reports vary greatly. What works for one person won’t work for others.”

“It’s quite true,” Nicky says, utterly straight-faced. “Some of them are very effective, on Joe. Don’t give him oysters if you want any peace and quiet at all.”

Joe licks more chocolate mousse from his spoon decadently. “I have a very different memory of that incident,” he says. Under the table, he slides his foot out of his flip flop and up between Nicky’s thighs.

“Do you now,” Nicky asks without asking. There’s that twinkle in his eye he gets when he’s teasing, Joe can hear it in his voice even if Nicky’s eyes are covered.

Nile looks between them. “I’m just gonna go ask Andy about this,” she decides.

“A wise choice,” Joe calls after her and turns back to his dessert.

“Yusuf,” Nicky says, taking off his sunglasses. “If you fellate that dessert spoon one more time, I am going to take you back to our room and not let you come until you cry.”

“Hm,” Joe says, and runs his tongue delicately around the circumference of the spoon. “I knew aphrodisiacs worked on you.”

In a fluid motion, Nicky stands, drops a handful of bills on the table and grabs Joe by the shirt collar. Joe barely has time to slide his flip flop back on before he’s pulled from his chair and out the door.

“ _You_ work on me,” Nicky growls in his ear as they leave.

Joe kisses his cheek. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

**Author's Note:**

> More accurate subtitle for this fic: One time they had to fake it, four times they were lying to themselves and two times they acknowledged it was real.
> 
> Firstly: A huge thank you to [dreamtiwasanarchitect](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamtiwasanarchitect/profile) and KMC for giving this a read-through and providing me with tips! Also a huge thank you for the existence of [the Old Guard Character Resource Hub](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AiuVRC_iiPVINM-YgZJgyB-c-hCfMnfQ9I6Y81szOJ4/edit?pli=1#heading=h.jsnhvqlhe6kl), which was invaluable while writing this.
> 
> Secondly: Is any of this historically accurate? WHO KNOWS. 
> 
> **Some things I didn't make up:**
> 
>   1. Oysters were already a known thing, both as a foodstuff and as an aphrodisiac, and two men who grew up in shipping towns at the Mediterranean coast almost certainly would have both eaten oysters several times before.
>   2. Linseed oil was also known and used for leather goods, although not always in its pure form. Also, I don't recommend trying what they do with it at home, because people use it for leather goods primarily because it dries really fast. Also, rags soaked in linseed oil are a fire hazard. Make of that what you will.
>   3. The siege of Antioch was one of the most gruesome parts of the first crusade, with very heavy losses on both sides. The siege of Jerusalem led to more civilian deaths because it turned into a massacre overall; the siege of Antioch had a much higher military death toll. Particularly the crusaders died horribly due to starvation and illness. This is not to say any of the battles or sieges during any crusade were better or worse than others, it's all just different types of violence and death.
>   4. On the subject of the first crusade, the line about blood on cobblestones is in part based on one of the most famous sources from the siege of Jerusalem written by Raymond of Aguilers who claims that (trigger warning for graphic content) in the Temple Mount area, men were wading through blood up to their knees. Some other sources talk about blood up to the ankles. It's likely all of these are exaggerations to some degree, but the brutality and unnecessary slaughter of the inhabitants of Jerusalem is not in dispute.
>   5. Yusuf ibn Tashfin was real, and he was the leader of the Almoravid empire, which did include both Valencia and Marrakesh. At the time, the Iberian peninsula was pretty divided in that Alfonso VI was trying to get rid of the Muslims, but ultimately failed - there would be no success on that front until 1492. Contemporary sources also say Yusuf ibn Tashfin was a pretty cool guy.
>   6. The Iberian peninsula under Muslim rule was one of the most tolerant places in medieval Europe, there is documentation of people of all monotheistic religions living side by side and being allowed to practice freely there, and a very famous painting of a Muslim and a Jew playing chess.
>   7. Genoa did attack Mahdia and burn the ships in the harbor in 1087.
>   8. Guido Spinola, Benvenuta's husband, was a real guy who was Consul of Genoa in 1102 and amassed a lot of land and power, leading to his family becoming very powerful. Their coat of arms has an ice cream cone on it, it's great. I couldn't find out what his real wife's name was, but it almost certainly wasn't the supremely fictional Benvenuta di Genova.
>   9. Being the mother of a not-yet-of-age heir was one of the only ways women could hold real power in Medieval times. Tbh, I really hope Benvenuta and Lucia don't come off entirely cold and unfeeling in this - for their time and station, they're doing what they can. Like, if I married some guy to bring money into the family and had his children while my brothers were gallivanting off on some holy war and I stayed home and put a decade of work into our family estate and then the brother who was never supposed to inherit anyway came swanning back in, I wouldn't want him to inherit either. I wouldn't put a knife to his throat, but you know. This stuff did happen.
>   10. L-Imdina is the Maltese name for Mdina, one of the oldest cities on Malta, which passed from Muslim to Byzantine rule in 1091 (allegedly peacefully, says Wikipedia). Maltese would have already been spoken in the 1100s.
> 

> 
> Thank you for reading, please leave your thoughts in the comments! I know there is some stuff in this fic that can be pretty sensitive, if you have questions or think I portrayed anything offensively, please reach out, here or on [tumblr](http://bewires.tumblr.com).


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